Monday, January 28, 2013

I haven’t ‘blogged’ in quite some time, but for whatever reason, I felt the need tonight. Why you may ask...or maybe you didn’t, but I’ll give you the answer anyways. Panic attacks. Ugh. They suck more than that lady who swoops in and steals your parking spot at the overly packed ‘I think there may be a snow storm coming and we need bread and twinkies’ (ok, maybe I’m the only one who thinks of twinkies because I’m going through a fat phase right now and I’d totally stock up on them (if they still existed) if a snow storm was coming, but because we live in Texas and snow storms here are practically non-existent so it’s probably not something that would actually happen), grocery store parking lot. Yeah...they just suck. A few months ago I had convinced myself that I had completely defeated the horror that is the panic attack, but apparently, I haven’t. Bummer.

I obviously have entirely too many ramblings going on in my head, so maybe a ‘vent’ would help get some of the crazy thoughts out and allow me to focus on more important things in my life like making sure my kid wears pants to school. Yeah, that’s really a conversation that is had with him. He’s apparently not a fan of pants.

Last Thursday, I had the Granddaddy of all panic attacks and had to call 911 from my cell phone while driving into work. I told the operator that I was pretty sure I was having a heart attack to which she responded by immediately putting me on hold which I believe pulled me out of the ‘Oh dear Lord, I’m dying’ thought process that a panic attack ensues. Yup, on hold...seriously. I told the operator that I was pretty sure I was dying and she said ‘ok, I’m going to get you on with a paramedic. Don’t hang up.’ Little did I know that the ‘don’t hang up’ advice was because I was going to be put on hold for 10 minutes. Of course, by the time that the panic attack passed I hung up only to be called back a few minutes later by an operator who told me they already had an ambulance on the way and to just hang tight. When the paramedics showed up, I had to explain to them from a half opened car window (mostly because I was super embarrassed) that I was pretty sure I had just had a panic attack and I was going to be okay. Of course, by the time they pulled away my brain went directly back into the idea of, ‘maybe you really are dying and you’ve just let all of your help leave and now you’re going to die in the parking lot of a Texaco off of the highway and Lord only knows if you call them back you’ll be put on hold again and by the time they make it here you’ll for sure be a goner’, but I pulled myself out of that one too…obviously because I’m blogging about it now. See, I desperately need an outlet.

Seriously, this is the life of someone who has panic attacks for absolutely no reason at all. I know that all of my blogs in the past have been about how fabulously wonderful or crazy my family is, but maybe I should change directions and address the crap that is making me not so, well, fabulously wonderful. Even if no one ever reads this, I can one day look back and know that I have survived. Okay, so it’s not like a cancer survival story or a my husband was a serial killer in a secret second life story, but it’s my panic attack survival story and that’s all I can look forward to right now. I was somehow picked to be one of the 40 million that suffer from this ridiculously indescribable mental disorder that so many people do not understand, but that the few who do can relate to may run across my story and know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Not because I’ve gotten there yet, but because I have decided that I will get there come hell or high water.